“Obama bade his legal henchmen — his own personal John Yoos, as it were — to tell the Supreme Court that it should kill the Canadian citizen’s case seeking compensation for his unlawful arrest by U.S. officials, who then rendered him not unto Caesar but to the untender mercies of Syria’s torture cells. The Robed Ones agreed, dismissing, without comment, Arar’s appeal of a lower court ruling that quashed his case — a decision that Scott Horton rightly likened last year to the Dred Scott case, which upheld the legality of slavery, even in states which prohibited it.”

Actually, rather than telling outright lies, the media is just doing what it normally does–divulging about 30% of what is really going on and spinning it to fit their agenda, while conveniently leaving out the other 70%.

I certainly do not support or defend pirates or their tactics, but the point is that there is always another side to the story (that is not covered in the “mainstream” corporate media). This video from the IFC Media Project fills in some of the missing pieces on the whole piracy thing:

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Sunday that there will be an “uptick” in American casualties in Afghanistan as the U.S. military increases its presence in that country, which he characterized as “a real mess.”

The vice president’s prediction prompted outrage from liberal antiwar groups who characterized it as “cavalier,” although a leading scholar at a Washington neoconservative think tank called the Biden remarks an overdue recognition of reality.

Of course the new administration is just blaming everything on Bush (who does deserve a huge amount of blame). But the point is that they are going to continue the same policies Bush had, just with different rhetoric. There will be no real change (except for the worse) as the powers that be bench “W” and put in their new man Barack. So much for Obama being an anti-war peace candidate. More broken campaign promises are on the way–of that we can be sure.

On the House floor Ron Paul had the guts to point out that Israel helped to create Hamas. But he didn’t stop there — he mentioned the criminally under-reported fact that Osama Bin Laden was an ally of the U.S. in the 1980’s (so was Saddam Hussein) which also hints — to the perceptive — at the probable CIA involvement in the creation of Al-Qaeda.

Wow. For the sake of Dr. Paul’s safety it’s a good thing he did not become president.

The U.S. media can be very one-sided and deceptive. This is especially true when it comes to war and/or the Middle East. It is not unusual for the world to hear one thing while the controlled U.S. corporate “mainstream” media propaganda machine feeds us something else.

In the overall historical perspective (recent events aside) neither group in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is totally right or wrong in their behavior. But we only get one biased side of the issue in the U.S.. This is to be expected — the U.S. arms Israel and gives them huge amounts of money in foreign aid. Of course, the U.S. also leads the way in the so-called “War on Terror” and in pre-emptive war. Below are some resources to help fill in the information gaps.

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Ron Paul on the fighting between Israel and the Palestinians:

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Eric Margolis writes an excellent summary of the issue:

Israel’s ‘Fait Accompli’ in Gaza

There are two completely different versions of what is currently happening in Gaza.

In the Israeli and North American press version, Hamas – “Islamic terrorists” backed by Iran – have in an unprovoked attack fired deadly rockets on innocent Israel with the intent of destroying the Jewish state.

North American politicians and the media say Israel “has the right to defend itself.”

True enough. No Israeli government can tolerate rockets hitting its towns, even though the casualty totals have been less than the car crash fatalities registered during a single holiday weekend on Israel’s roads.

The firing of the feeble, homemade al-Qassam rockets by Palestinians is both useless and counterproductive.

It damages their image as an oppressed people and gives right-wing Israeli extremists a perfect reason to launch more attacks on the Arabs and refuse to discuss peace.

Israel’s supporters insist it has the absolute right to drop hundreds of tons of bombs on “Hamas targets” inside the 360 sq km Gaza Strip to “take out the terrorists.”

As usual, this cartoon-like version of events omits a great deal of nuance and background.

While firing rockets at civilians is a crime so, too, is the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which is an egregious violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions.

According to the UN, most of Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinian refugees subsist near the edge of hunger. Seventy per cent of Palestinian children in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition and psychological trauma.

Medical facilities are critically short of doctors, personnel, equipment, and drugs. Gaza has quite literally become a human garbage dump for all the Arabs that Israel does not want.

Gaza is one of the world’s most-densely populated places, a vast outdoor prison camp filled with desperate people. In the past, they threw stones at their Israeli occupiers; now they launch homemade rockets.Call it a prison riot, writ large.

The aerial bombings and the ongoing ground invasion of Gaza by Israeli ground forces must be analysed in a historical context. Operation “Cast Lead” is a carefully planned undertaking, which is part of a broader military-intelligence agenda first formulated by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001:

It was Israel which broke the truce on the day of the US presidential elections, November 4:

“Israel used this distraction to break the ceasefire between itself and Hamas by bombing the Gaza strip. Israel claimed this violation of the ceasefire was to prevent Hamas from digging tunnels into Israeli territory.

The very next day, Israel launched a terrorizing siege of Gaza, cutting off food, fuel, medical supplies and other necessities in an attempt to “subdue” the Palestinians while at the same time engaging in armed incursions.

In response, Hamas and others in Gaza again resorted to firing crude, homemade, and mainly inaccurate rockets into Israel. During the past seven years, these rockets have been responsible for the deaths of 17 Israelis. Over the same time span, Israeli Blitzkrieg assaults have killed thousands of Palestinians, drawing worldwide protest but falling on deaf ears at the UN.” [Shamus Cooke, The Massacre in Palestine and the Threat of a Wider War, Global Research, December 2008]

Planned Humanitarian Disaster

On December 8, US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was in Tel Aviv for discussions with his Israeli counterparts including the director of Mossad, Meir Dagan.

“Operation Cast Lead” was initiated two days day after Christmas. It was coupled with a carefully designed international Public Relations campaign under the auspices of Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

Hamas’ military targets are not the main objective. Operation “Cast Lead” is intended, quite deliberately, to trigger civilian casualities.

What we are dealing with is a “planned humanitarian disaster” in Gaza in a densly populated urban area.

The longer term objective of this plan, as formulated by Israeli policy makers, is the expulsion of Palestinians from Palestinian lands:

“Terrorize the civilian population, assuring maximal destruction of property and cultural resources… The daily life of the Palestinians must be rendered unbearable: They should be locked up in cities and towns, prevented from exercising normal economic life, cut off from workplaces, schools and hospitals, This will encourage emigration and weaken the resistance to future expulsions” Ur Shlonsky, quoted by Ghali Hassan, Gaza: The World’s Largest Prison, Global Research, 2005)

[Note: A lot of the news footage in this video comes from a year or two ago. Since then much of the talk about things like the NAFTA Superhighway and the Amero has quieted–probably in part due to the exposure it got from videos like these. No doubt those plans (in some form) remain however. You only need look to the current financial crisis to see the plans for global currency and economic control continuing to unfold before us even today.]

Georgia-Russia conflict basics: Georgia invades South Ossetia and starts killing innocent civilians who want to break away from Georgia and gain independence. Russia steps in to stop it. Russia (who is not without fault by any means historically, but actually is mostly on the good side this time) gets blamed for being the aggressor. U.S. neocons and other various warmongers get to have a field day talking about military actions against Russia, preemptive strikes, and a new cold war.

Here is a BBC broadcast that ran just before Russia intervened in Georgia’s attacks on South Ossetia. It’s interesting that they report the truth here, but within a day or two changed their coverage to fall in line with the Western medias propaganda storyline:

Remember: When Georgia broke from the Soviets the U.S. supported them in their quest for independence. If Georgia has a right to independence (as they do) so does South Ossetia. I’m sure the fact that Georgia has lots of troops involved in the U.S. “efforts” in Iraq (in other words, Georgia’s troops are being trained by the U.S. so they can go back to Georgia — or other places — and carry out the desires of the U.S. government) has nothing to do with the U.S. supporting Georgia even as they commit war crimes against the South Ossetians. How is it that the U.S. was OK with Georgia having their independence, but if the South Ossetians attempt to gain it (most South Ossetians have closer ties to Russia than to Georgia) they deserve to be attacked? Hmm, the U.S. does have special forces inside of Georgia (along with some Israelis) training the Georgian military, so Georgia must be in the right! After all, the U.S. side never does anything bad! We don’t invade countries that haven’t attacked us. Oh, wait… never mind.

Who says that Socialist and Communist countries are the worst offenders when it comes to corruption and propaganda? The level of hypocrisy and propagandistic lying in the Western media has reached new lows during the last week in their reporting on the conflict in Georgia.

Watch as “Shep” has to take a very convenient commercial break (were his producers/the Fox censors buzzing in his ear just before he cut the lady off?). How frustrating it must be for those people closest to the events in Georgia — who know the truth of the situation — to hear it being so grossly distorted and misrepresented in the Western media:

Here is an update on the 12 year old girl and her aunt after their appearance on Fox:

In this video we see CNN using footage of the attacking Georgian military to demonize Russia by claiming it is actually Russia that is depicted in the footage:

Conclusion: Georgia is now a U.S.-puppet state rather than a Soviet one. The Georgian aggression was undoubtedly planned in advance as part of long-term Western strategy, and they intentionally used the start of the Olympic Games as cover.

Good thing the U.S. just happened to get a missile defense system set up in Poland recently. Good thing they are also setting up related facilities in the Czech Republic, and in other strategic locations surrounding Russia. Good thing too the U.S. came out last year openly admitting that a nuclear first strike (via NATO) against Russia is now on the table as an option. Yeah, good thing.

An interesting response to these events by a Russian-American:

An interesting response to these events by an American in South Ossetia: